Lisa Montgomery was the only woman on federal death row. She was originally supposed to be put to death on December 8, but the execution was delayed since two of her lawyers tested positive for the novel coronavirus after visiting her in a federal prison in Texas back in November. Her execution took place on January 13.

Montgomery’s execution date was originally rescheduled for January 12, but Judge Randolph D. Moss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said that this execution date was unlawfully rescheduled since the stay order due to her lawyers’ illness was still in effect.

Kelley Henry, Montgomery’s lawyer, gave a statement saying, “The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight. Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa Montgomery should feel shame… Our Constitution forbids the execution of a person who is unable to rationally understand her execution. The current administration knows this. And they killed her anyway.”

Montgomery was convicted in 2008 for killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Stinnett was 23 years old and eight months pregnant. Montgomery cut the baby out of Stinnett’s abdomen. She tried to pass the baby off as her own before admitting to the crime. She was convicted of kidnapping resulting in death and was given the death penalty.

Her lawyers said that she had severe mental illness that was passed down to her by her parents and exacerbated by the abuse she went through as a child, which included being sex trafficked by her mother and gang-raped by men. She was born with brain damage since her mom drank when she was pregnant with her. She was the victim of incest. Montgomery was also forced to marry her stepbrother when she was 18 years old. She had four kids and then was sterilized against her will. According to Leigh Goodmark, a professor of law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and the director of its Gender Violence Clinic, “Understanding her crime requires us to understand the trauma that she experienced. They are inextricable from each other.”

The stay of her execution prevented her from being executed before December 31. If the execution had been pushed back to after Biden’s inauguration on January 20, the chances of Montgomery being executed would have decreased, since a spokesperson for Biden told the Associated Press that Biden “opposes the death penalty now and in the future.” According to rules regarding federal executions, the prisoner must be notified at least 20 days in advance. However, if the execution date is rescheduled within 20 days of the original date, the prisoner only needs to be told “as soon as possible.”

Trump had resumed federal executions in July 2020. There had not been any since 2003. The last woman who was federally executed was Bonnie Heady in 1953. She was executed in a gas chamber for kidnapping and murdering a six-year-old boy in Kansas City, Missouri.

The government faced several logistical challenges regarding how they would go about executing her. She would need to be flown in from Texas to the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, to be executed. Executions require crews of dozens of people, so Montgomery was scheduled to be executed the same week as two other inmates on death row. At the Terre Haute facility, there has been a coronavirus outbreak. At least 14 of the 50 male inmates on death row have coronavirus. Montgomery had not tested positive for coronavirus. However, the two inmates who were supposed to be executed the same week had tested positive for coronavirus. The execution ended up taking place. She was pronounced dead on January 13 at 1:31 A.M.